Telecommunications and Urban and Regional Development: the Impacts of Telecommunications (ICTs) on Cities and Regions
Marina Cavill
Abstract
This paper explores the complex and poorly understood set of relationships between telecommunications and the development, planning and management of contemporary cities and regions, that is,. how the advances in telecommunications affect all aspects of urban and regional development: social, economic, physical, environmental, geographical and governmental.
Interdisciplinarity as Sense-Making:
Knowledge and Information Use Patterns in Family Studies
Mari Davis
Abstract
This paper reports on journal reading behaviour of family scholars. A conceptual model of disciplinary/interdisciplinary information use cycles was used as a framework for analysing data on reading and journal preferences among a sample of Australian family scholars. The journal preferences reported by respondents reflect an openness to many disciplinary perspectives.
The data suggest that respondents commonly employed open and fluid information reading strategies not bound by disciplinary barriers. Implications of this research on the design of information services are briefly discussed.
Information, Knowledge and Research
Graeme Johanson
Abstract
It is often assumed that disciplines with a practical bent lack theoretical structure. Traditionally, the strengths of the professions involved in the information chain are identified primarily by reference to applied skills. Yet these professions, which include information managers, are not merely marginal adjuncts which service the research process and the generation of new knowledge. Daily, they work and think within an intellectual paradigm which encourages observation of, and participation in, all paradigms and a keen appreciation of the delineation of disciplinary territories. The paper intends to provoke debate.
Perspectives on Cultural Continuity and Change in an Independent School for Girls
Suzanne Kell.
Abstract
This study incorporates an organization-as-culture metaphor to view the cultural processes of a middle-sized, century-old independent school for girls in Melbourne, Australia. The research explores how members of a school community generate cultural symbols and understandings that shape and are shaped by their experience of school life in interaction with the wider society. It is an attempt to combine a psychological account of organizational culture with understandings drawn from sociology and anthropology. Culture is conceptualized as a multi-layered, dynamic phenomenon, which is composed of multiple narratives, and which is amenable to observation rather than measurement. Kelly's Personal Construct Theory (1955) is extended into the domain of organizational meaning systems to reveal the ways in which individuals and groups construe organizational culture by resisting, supporting, or expressing ambivalence towards the organization's dominant narratives. Personal construct theory is combined with Bourdieu's social theory to illuminate the ways in which power is forged in the interaction between the micro issues of school-bound culture and the macro issue of the school's relationship to the larger society.
Ritual Information: Blocking Questions and Fixing Meaning
Supriya Singh.
Abstract
This paper describes an empirical study of how middle-income Anglo-Celtic couples in Australia
construct the meaning of money in marriage. It focuses on how the secular ritual of the marital joint account
fixes the meaning of marriage money as personal, private, joint and nebulous while blocking questions of
equality and power. Equality is redefined as "jointness" and money is trivialised. The joint account blurs the
gap between expectations of equality in marriage and the reality of wives' financial dependence.
The focus on ritual information helps deepen the understanding of money in marriage, and the nature
of the information process.
The Information Infrastructure for Humanities Scholars in Australia
Graeme Johanson
Abstract
This paper summarizes the main conclusions drawn from available research into the use of information by humanities scholars in Australia. It identifies special characteristics of information and its use in humanities disciplines. The advantages of the notion of the virtual library are described as the way for humanities scholars to make the most of future developments in infrastructures which are being moulded around new information technologies. Prophesies abound, and their feasibility or fancifulness are evaluated. This research, which was done for the Australian Academy of Humanities, concludes that concerted, national co-operation will be required to fund and to evaluate future infrastructures effectively.
Found by Chance : the Role of Incidental
Information Acquisition in an Ecological Model of Information Use
Kirsty Williamson
Abstract
The study described in his paper focussed on 'incidental information acquisition' as a key concept. The role
of information which is incidentally or accidentally acquired has been neglected in the study of information seeking behaviour. It discusses research which investigated the information needs and information-seeking behaviours of 202 older adults, aged 60 years and over, from both metropolitan Melbourne and rural areas of Victoria. The approach of the study was ecological in the sense that a picture was built up of information-seeking in the context of the lives of the sample, both individually and collectively. As part of this process, an attempt was made to learn as much as possible about the physical, cultural and social environments of respondents, so that factors affecting information-seeking behaviour could be better understood. The study also examined the role of sources of information, including the mass media and telecommunications, in assisting or hindering respondents to be "informed". This paper discusses the conceptual framework used for this study, the methodology, findings and conclusions. In particular, it highlights the role of information which was discovered by chance by respondents (referred to as 'incidental information acquisition') and presents a model of information use which incorporates this concept. The study found that older people both purposefully seek information for their everyday lives and also acquire it incidentally as they monitor their world.